GERZEAN CULTURE

also called Naqadah Ii Culture, predynastic Egyptian cultural phase given the sequence dates 4065 by Sir Flinders Petrie and later dated c. 3400c. 3100 BC. Evidence indicates that the Gerzean culture was not brought by invaders but was rather a further development of the culture of the Amratian period, which immediately preceded the Gerzean. Centred primarily at Naqadah and Hierakonpolis in Upper Egypt, and Sayala in Nubia, Gerzean culture was contemporary with that of Maadi in the north and was characterized by a buff-coloured pottery with pictorial decorations in dark red paint; the use of a tubular drill with abrasive for stonecutting; pear-shaped mace-heads; ripple-flaked flint knives; and an advanced metallurgy. Toward the end of the period pictographic writing on pottery, slate palettes, and stone appeared, first at Sayala and Qustul, slightly later at Hierakonpolis, under kings employing pharaonic iconography. Contact with western Asia during this time may have inspired the building of mud-brick niched architecture, the use of cylinder seals, and the adoption of certain ornamental motifs and pottery forms. The Dynastic culture, which immediately followed the Gerzean, developed directly out of the Gerzean and the other Upper Egyptian cultures that preceded it; gradually, during the last part of the Gerzean, the rulers in Hierakonpolis were able to create not only a cultural but also a political unification of all of Egypt, overpowering Lower Egypt and the rival kings at Sayala.